Growing Older

Growing Older

I guess we all talk about time flying past. Especially as we get older, we seem to notice that the passage of time is “fleeting”. When a child is told “5 minutes”, that short wait seems like an eternity. Yet now, for me at least, 5 minutes is over in the blink of an eye. Perhaps this is why we learn to value time so much. We even give time different descriptions depending on how we value it. “Quality time” is the most important of all while we all know what a waste of time is.

Do we give God our quality time or do we limit Him to our spare time? Does our family get our quality or our free time? Do we have the time we need to do whatever we want to do?

All rhetorical questions with no particular answers at all let alone any correct answer. Lets return to the theme of time going faster as we get older. Society has decided that once we get to a certain age, regardless of our abilities, and faculties, or otherwise, when we become a disposable asset. It came as a devastating revelation to me to realise that the world, wastrel that it is, was about to throw all ,y experience and expertise away. All because I had reached “retirement age”. That was when the Lord started to speak to me and to use me.

There came a point when a glorious realisation just floored me. Against all the ways of the world, I realised that “retirement”, or any derivative of that word, is not in God’s dictionary. It does not exist in the Kingdom of Heaven. 

In October 2007, the Lord spoke to me. I had been on my own since my wife had died and I was over the first few stages of grief and all that goes with it. I came home from my work one day and the Lord spoke to me like He was sitting in the chair next to me. As I crossed the doorstep, He said, “Time to go. You’ve paid your dues.” That’s all He actually said but I knew without a shadow of a doubt that He was calling me back to my old home town – and “retirement”. Almost immediately, a friend called me and asked if I could make a mission trip with him to Brussels in Belgium. By the time the trip was over, I knew He was calling me to the travelling ministry, so I took retirement and moved back closer to the ministry base. To cut a long story very short, there followed four years of intense ‘missions’ activity with that ministry team.

Then I met my new wife and the Lord ended that travelling ministry season by having us move to our present church. Now we are involved in a lot of ministry work and our much looked-forward-to retirement became a busy round of work full time for the Lord.

Why do I tell you all this? Because there are many, like a friend of ours, to whom retirement comes as a huge shock. The feelings of rejection and the sudden realisation that we are on the world’s ‘scrap heap’ come as a most unwelcome surprise. Even to those who have prepared for and anticipated this change for a long time.

I want to tell everyone reading this post that God’s plans for you do not stop when you reach the worlds retirement age. There is no such change in God’s Kingdom work. In fact it is the opposite. The older we grow, the more our experience is valued and used by the Lord to help those still struggling with the problems the world brings with it into our lives.

So take heart my fellow oldies, God is far from finished with you if only you will allow Him to continue to use you.